Trigger warning:
Many people, including porn performers themselves, acknowledge that porn is not a solid or safe source for information about sex. After all, it’s just a fantasy, right?
Still, just because porn wasn’t intended to be substitute sex ed doesn’t mean it isn’t used for exactly that by countless tweens and teens. Here are a few real tweets from people who consult hardcore content for educational purposes. We don’t share these to shame them, only to show you that it happens:
But what’s the big deal with this? What actually happens when teens regularly log onto XXX sites specifically for education and inspiration? It’s not like they end up with life-altering injuries in the process, right?
This might sound like an exaggeration, but that’s exactly what happened to one teen in Australia whose bowel was so damaged during porn-inspired group sex that she’ll need to use a colostomy bag for the rest of her life.
Wait, what? Who actually tries the stuff shown in porn?
A recent Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC) investigation into how porn is impacting teens across the continent revealed that a group of teens wanted to re-enact group anal sex—a popular, mainstream and easily accessible category—with devastating consequences.
The worst part? This incident of a porn-inspired sex act resulted in injuries, though they can result in death, are not isolated and they are not rare. This kind of sexual violence disguised as sexual fantasy is becoming increasingly normalized as porn continues to be more affordable, accessible, available, and anonymous than ever before in recorded human history.
As ABC’s report states, “These acts are happening in bedrooms across the country where the portability of the internet has enabled kids—and adults … —to load a porn video on their phone, show it to their partner and say, ‘Here, do this.'”
Porn education organization Reality and Risk estimates more than 90% of boys and 60% of girls have seen online porn. Consider this fact through the lens that research has shown 88% of the most popular porn includes physical aggression of some kind. Add onto that the fact that in the most popular videos on Pornhub, 78% of men were shown having an orgasm, compared to just 18.3% of women.
Mainstream porn today is not produced with the consumer’s relationship improvement as the goal—similarly, it isn’t produced with sex education in mind. But no matter the intended effect producers and porn creators may have, it cannot be denied that the scope of consequences of violent porn is growing all the time.
What else are teens learning from porn?
In a 2008 University of New Hampshire survey, 93% of male college students and 62% of female students said they saw online porn before they were 18. Many females, in particular, weren’t seeking it out. Thirty-five percent of males said they had watched it 10 or more times during adolescence. Keep in mind, that survey was taken one year after the first iPhone was released—before internet-connected smartphones were widely used by tweens. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that rates of regular underage consumption have drastically increased since then.
Pornhub and other mainstream sites are aware that underage consumers view their content regularly, even if they don’t reflect those stats in their annual reports. That being said, what are teens searching out?
In their latest annual report, Pornhub lists hentai, step mom, and MILF, among other categories, as the searches that defined 2018 for the 18-24 demographic.
We know from other reports that explain what porn teens watch these days that facials, anal sex, and group sex are also popular categories. In other words, this isn’t your dad’s Playboy stash. This is real hardcore stuff, and it’s having a real effect on underage consumers.
Studies show that people who consume porn are far more likely to believe that things like group sex or dangerous sex acts are more common than their non-porn-consuming peers. Why? Because that’s what they’ve seen in porn. Consider the 16-year-old who will have to use a colostomy bag for the rest of her life.
In one study of popular porn videos, the average number of sexual partners in a scene was three, although the number ranged as high as 19. Today’s mainstream porn sites include whole categories of unprotected sex with strangers, brutal gang rape, and other dangerous and violent sex acts.
Why this matters
It cannot be ignored that teens and adolescents are regularly seeking out porn for information about sex.
But just as harmful as the things porn shows is what it doesn’t show. Pornography doesn’t give an accurate picture of what healthy sex is like; they cut out things like talking, cuddling, bonding touch, and other ways partners are responsive to each other’s needs and preferences. [1] They also cut out the consequences of the kinds of sex portrayed in porn. [2] No one ever contracts sexually transmitted infections in porn. There are no unplanned pregnancies, no cervical cancer, no intestinal parasites, and no skin tearing or bruises.
In porn, no matter how rough a person treats their partner, nearly everything looks like it feels good. [3] In fact, in the study of popular porn videos, in nine scenes out of 10, a woman was being hit, beaten, yelled at, or otherwise harmed, and the result was almost always the same: the victim either responded with pleasure or had no response at all. [4]
Until our generation and the next understand that porn is anything but harmless or healthy entertainment, our peers will continue to default to XXX sources for sex education. Unfortunately, this education won’t be ultimately be surrounding sex—because porn profits off of so much more than sex. Instead, it’ll be an education in abuse, violence, how to override nonconsent, humiliation, and domination.
Is this what we want our relational legacy to be?
